Sunday cometh. Hence we compile a fine and noble list of all the interesting gaming reading from across the list and strive towards an equally fine and noble day when I don’t slip into a link to a piece of pop music that’s been working on me over the same period. We really do try.

Spent a good chunk of the week listening to Jay-Z’s The Black Album. It may not surprise people how much I occasionally empathise with Egocentric American Rappers. I too have 99 problems, such as writing a Sims 3 preview, playing some more Darkfall and seeing how much tea I can drink without causing terminal kidney malfunction.

The Sunday Paperss? Has it always been like that and I have just failed to notice? Oh my.

I liked the achievements article, quite funny but had a valid point. I don’t think I’m too far gone yet… For instance, I don’t want to buy the Orange Box for my XBox just to get the achievements not available on PC. And I haven’t tried the gnome yet.

I’m so glad neither Supreme Commander nor Eve Online nor Civ4 feature achievements.
The line “Who needs gameplay when you have ACHIEVEMENTS?” is just so true. First consoles screwed over our games by producing horribly ported versions of console crap, and now this..

I loved Julian Gollop’s games as a kid. Chaos and Lords of Chaos were two of the first games I really got into. Rebelstar II was also brilliant, loved the whole Aliens feel to it and the firing system where your view traced the bullets was genius.

I appreciate Jim’s trying to acknowledge Ion Storm’s role in PC history by tying it to the Thief article (And they and LG share a lot of course). But as a Thief fanboy I feel obliged to chuck in that they can’t really be given equal reverence in any discussion of the Thief series.
The open ended city idea was part of Looking Glass’ plans for Thief 3 when they closed and an engine was in development to handle it. And the “city” segments from Thief DS, if you joined them all together, would fit easily into any one of the big city levels in the previous two games.
Just so people know, anyway.

Kieron, If u are playing Darkfall… buy bags, It helps organize the inventary. And If you need help, just ask in “Race Alliance”, people is very helpfull there. Since you are a newbie, you will be stuck killing goblins, If you get attacked by reds, try to teamwork with the other newbies, you have nothing to lose, and the reds his gear.
The game is much like a Gym, where the basic task is to let your character levelup macroing. There are much more options once you join a guild. The player cities are the awesome (you feel the ownership, is like a small town where you know everyone, and every once in a while, stuff “grown” from the ground has is built / enhanced ).

Also, good luck. If sad you have to play the game now, the relation eurogamer – darkfall is tainted, and most people will be negative (well.. almost the ~9000/H/H/H a megazillions players have declared the WAR to eurogamer[1], you probably sould not joint that guild ;-) )

Kieron: “As a matter of interest, as a player, how do you think the last patch has effected macroing?”

Reduction total on the typical guy shotting to the sky. It will change the way guilds macro, but don’t stop it.
I think afk-macroing is part of the culture now.
And there are people swimming at nigh… on all cities.
I don’t see macroing as a problem. I like his effect on the world, it feel full of people and activity.

KentuckyFriedGamer:
Shigero Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, etc
For the west the best answer is probably percentage of population plus percentage of population wealthy enough to afford a PC (and be interested in the PC) back when those luminaries were getting their start.